What Was Oumuamua?

 What was that strange rock that passed through our solar system in 2017?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, Daniel, do you ever think about what it would
be like if we were visited by aliens? Oh? My god,
I think about that all the time. Do you really
what do you think would happen? Well, in my imagination,
it always starts the same way. There's some sleepy guy
in front of a terminal somewhere which starts to blink
and then annoy him and wake him up, and he
looks it up and he rubs his face and he goes, hmmm,

(00:26):
that's weird. Isn't that what happens in like every single
science witchian movie ever? Exactly? Um? And you know the
cool thing is that it's actually happened a few times
in real life. Yeah, that's right. Didn't happen just last year? Yeah,
it happened last year. It also happened in the seventies
when we got a weird signal from space called the
Wow signal. So sometimes we do we see weird things

(00:49):
coming at us from space. But it happened as recently
as last year. That's right, last year. Was it aliens?
We still don't know. We do know that it was weird,
how weird? Unquantifiably weird? Was it? Um? I'm a little weird.
It was more weird than you think. That's what I

(01:12):
was looking for. Hi, I'm and I'm Daniel, and welcome
to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe, in

(01:35):
which we try to take everything in the universe, including
weird things from outer space, and explain them to you,
even if they're inexplicable. That's right, even those unwanted visitors.
What do you mean unwanted? I want a visitor, You
want a visitor. Yeah, Aliens, come on down here. Tell
us all about how the rest of the galaxy works.
Tell us about the rest of the universe. We need

(01:56):
some more data. I'm dying to know what's going on
out there, aren't you? And slaves ITAs, You're so cynical. No,
it's very likely if aliens arived that they will just
take over and suck our brains out of our noses.
But in the inter the short intermission before that happens,
they might grant us some knowledge about the universe. And
you know that could be worth it. You would trade it.
You would be like, um, all yours, but first tell

(02:18):
me what's up with Pie? You know, if I could
have absolute knowledge of everything in the universe, Yeah, I
might uh, I might be willing to sacrifice my brain
for that. You're like, before you make me into a pie,
please explain pie to me. That's right, exactly. Well, today
on the podcast, we are going to talk about a

(02:38):
visitor to our solar system, one that not not a
single scientist can really explain. That's right. Last year of actually,
a strange object passed through our solar systems from somewhere
very far away, somewhere unknown, and there's a lot of
weird things about it, things that we can't quite explain.
So it's the opportunity to learn something about other parts

(03:01):
of the universe. It's a very suspicious object, right, Yeah,
I don't think you need to view it with suspicion.
I mean it's strange, it's unusual, it's weird. We don't
understand it. But I see as an opportunity. I mean,
it's like we've been looking out into the stars for
decades trying to learn about the rest of the universe
just by looking, Right, wouldn't it be awesome if some
of the rest of the universe came to us so

(03:22):
we could just like, you know, hold it and play
with it. Like the same reason we want to get
rocks from the Moon and rocks from Mars. Wouldn't you
love rocks from alien planets and other galaxies or other
solar systems. Yeah, so you're saying it's it's more like
conspicuous rather than suspicious. That's right. Yeah, it's um. It's
conspicuously suspicious or suspiciously conspicuous and probably not omniscient. Um.

(03:48):
But it hasn't answered any of our questions yet. So
we have a lot of questions about this weird rock
from outer space. That's right. Today on the podcast we'll
be talking about what is it, Where did it come from,
Where where is it going? Why did it stop by

(04:09):
our solar system? Isn't it Hawaiian? Maybe just like Hawaiian pizza?
I don't know. You know, the name comes from a
word in the Hawaiian language, right, Mua means scout or
like distant messenger or something. It's sort of a funny name.
But be careful how you pronounce it because it's it's
starts out with a letter that's not really a letter.

(04:30):
It's like this, um, you write it as an apostrophe.
It's a glottal stop. So I'm not even sure how
officially to pronounce this thing. So not only is the
rock weird, but the word for the rock is like
difficult to understand. We should do a whole podcast on
glottal stops on who names these things? Anyway, it's sort

(04:50):
of a noble name. It's supposed to be a noble name.
Like it's sort of like a like an explorer of
the stars, right, yeah, exactly, So it's got that positive
light on. It's not like invade or and destroyer of
worlds or anything. Yeah, although scout that that makes me
think of like an advanced count, you know, like a reconnaissance.
Are you worried that aliens are gonna invade and eat you? Um? Yes?

(05:15):
Um so yes. So this weird rock Omumu appeared in
seventeen and we are still struggling to understand it, where
it came from, what it was wise visited us, what
it means, you know, was it artificial, was it natural?
We still don't really know. Um And so we thought
let's dig into it on this podcast and tell you
all about how it's strange and how it's interesting and
all the mysteries that still remain about this weird rock. Yeah,

(05:38):
it was in the news a lot last year, right, yeah,
because it it passed through and really made waves in
the astronomical community. People were like amazed to see this
kind of thing. We were wondering how far these waves
in the astronomical community made their way into the general public.
How many people out there have heard of or knew

(05:58):
what is momma? Yeah? Was it only astronomers, was it
astronomers plus everybody interested in alien visitation? Or was it
everybody on earth that was captivated by the passage of
this strange rock. We were curious. I just want to
know how many people can pronounce it or spell it?
That's zero. I already know the answer to that. So

(06:19):
as usual, Daniel went out there and asked people in
the street what was MoMA? Yeah? I asked them have
you heard of omamua? And if they answered yes, I
also asked them what they thought it was. Well, here's
what people had to say. No, okay, no, I'm not
I'm sorry, I'm not her. Yeah I did not okay,

(06:42):
no I never heard of it? No all right, no, no, no, okay, yes,
what do you think? It is? Probably just some kind
of space debris. I did not hear about that, Okay,
I just what do you think it was probably some
kind of meteor. I just think it was like a
like a meteor off. Okay, No, I did not know. Okay, alright,

(07:05):
So about like fifty fifty half of the people seem
to know or have heard about it, and have the
people had no idea? I never heard of it. Yes,
what do you think of the Astronomy Communities pr PR machine?
Apparently it must be better than the aliens PR machinery,
But don't don't you think they could have done mua
mua with it? I think we should stop with the

(07:35):
all right, that officially ends them puns. Yeah, most people
had never even heard of this thing, which to me
boggles the mind, Like what an incredible event to happen,
and just for people to be unaware of it, you
know it all the newspapers and people were talking about it.
How could you just go through your normal life and
not know that there's a potential alien ship flying through
the Solar System? Right? I feel like maybe people are jaded,

(07:56):
you know, when they see an headline it goes put
possible alien visiting the Solar System. People just I don't
know these days, it's all it's just kind of all
part of the noise it goes through people's feeds. You mean,
because the world is so crazy that doesn't seem so
crazy anymore, or because you see that kind of headline
pretty often. Well, I think it's because, um, like the

(08:17):
headline itself sounds huge, but it's not like on the
front page of newspapers or website, do you know what
I mean? Like it it sounds like it should be
a huge deal, but you know, obviously people are not
freaking out about it. So you know, I think as
as news consumers, you just assume that it's hyperbole or
clickbait or something. Oh, I see everybody's lying, so everything
must be a lie. Right, Yeah, that's a bummer. So

(08:40):
when aliens, when aliens actually land, you're gonna be like whatever,
you're just clickbait, go away. Well, I mean, it's not
on the front page, right, Like, it's not you know,
it's not dominating the conversation. It's hard for me to
remember because I obviously pay attention to the scientific news,
maybe more than the average person. To me, it was
in the front of my brain for for a long time. Um,
but yeah, maybe for the averag person it was just

(09:01):
you know, a minor interesting thing that astronomers saw. Well,
let's break it down for people. Um, so what was
this thing called. So this is a thing that was
seen by a telescope in Hawaii. It's called the Pan
Stars telescope, and it basically just turned on. Is this
gorgeous new telescope and they're supposed to be looking deep
into outer space and understanding how the how the cosmos

(09:26):
that are evolving, and how supernova are exploding and all
that's kind of fascinating astronomical and cosmological questions. What makes
that telescope gorgeous? It can see really far into the past,
and so to me, that's just gorgeous. Like every time
we open our eyes in a new way or open
a new set of eyes, we see more of the universe,
and the universe is beautiful. I mean that's purely subjective,

(09:47):
but to me, when I look at in space, I
see beauty, and so I love when we turn on
new eyes and we can see new areas of the
universe we've never seen before. And that's where the Pan
Stars Telescope allowed us to do. Beautiful way to say it,
And so they turned this thing on and pretty quickly
they saw something weird. They saw this rock moving really

(10:07):
really fast tom into our solar system, and you might think, well,
there's a lot of rocks in the solar system, right,
how can you tell that this one is weird? Or
what's weird about this one? And the weird thing about
this one where its direction and its speed? Wait, so
why didn't other telescope see it? Why did it require
this brand new, gorgeous telescope. Well, this is one of
the more powerful telescopes we have. I think other telescopes

(10:30):
could have seen it. There's also just a little bit
of luck and who spotted it first. You happen to
be looking in the right place, and also you happen
to notice it. You know, a lot of times you
turn on your telescope and you're looking for thing A
and you accidentally discover thing B. But only if you're
curious enough. Right, if you see something weird in your
data and you're like, huh, I don't understand that, what
could that be? You could just shrug and say I

(10:51):
don't know whatever and move on with your life. Or
you could follow it up and try to figure it out.
And sometimes that's where the greatest discoveries are made. You know.
That's how like Pluto was discovered it or that's how
pulsars were discovered. All these things were accidents, is things.
People saw something weird in their data. It didn't just
blow off their curiosity. They followed it up, right. Yeah,
that worked out really well for Pluto. I think Pluto's

(11:15):
legal team is still fighting that battle. It's posthumous legal team.
It's not dead. We didn't kill Pluto's still there, That's
what the book says. So they turned on this telescope
and they basically saw stars and things out there, and

(11:36):
they saw one of them moving in a weird direction
at weird speed. Yeah, and there's a lot of weird
things out there. Right. We have planets in our Solar system.
We have asteroids, we have we have a lot of asteroids.
We even have comets, right, And commets move differently, but
everything in the Solar System shares one feature, which is
they're moving around the Sun. Right. They're gravitationally bound by

(11:57):
the Sun. They're in a stable orbit. So even comets
that come in every hundred years and then zoom out
really far, they're still moving around the Sun right there there,
and the focus of their orbit is the Sun. And
this object was moving in a way that's totally inconsistent
with being in an orbit around the Sun any orbit. Right,

(12:17):
It was going way too fast in the wrong direction.
You mean, we've never seen an asteroid or anything else.
It wasn't revolving around our Sun. Is that what you're saying.
That's exactly what I'm saying. We've never seen anything never.
It wasn't gravitationally bound to the Sun. This is the
first time we've seen something that looks like it came
from another Sun. And we could tell just by the motion. Right,

(12:38):
that's there's none from We'll talk later about what it
looks like and how weird it is in the shape
of it, but just from its motion, we could tell
that it didn't come from our solar system because it
was moving too fast or in a weird trajectory, or
what do you mean both. It was moving in a
trajectory that made it clear it was not going to
stick around. Right. They saw it moving, and they could

(12:58):
plot its speed and its direction, so they could tell
where it was going to go, and they could tell
it was just going to go right through our solar system.
It wasn't moving around the Sun. So we could get
lots of looks at it. It It was just going to
pass through once, and how do we figure out how
far it was? How do we figure out how far
away it is? Um, that's a good question. You know.
We did a whole episode about measuring distances to things,

(13:20):
and so I think you can tell how far away
things are using parallax seeing, you know, multiple measurements that
that are spaced far apart, sort of the way your
eyes work, and so within the solar system, I think
that works pretty well because things aren't that far away.
So you can tell how far away things are by
saying how differently they look or how much they move
from different viewpoints, So you multiple telescopes, or you look

(13:41):
at the same thing over several days as the Earth
is moving. That's a great question. I'm not sure, but
that's how I would do it. And it wasn't just
moving a little bit fast relative to our solar system.
It was a moving something like twenty six kilometers per
second faster than we were per second. Yeah, exactly, That's
that's pretty fast. It's like, in a second, wish you

(14:03):
just went twenty six kilometers. I wish I could go
ko per second. You know, maybe Tesla's can do that.
I don't know the too. What is it called the
hyper exactly? It was basically hyperlooping through our solar system.
Yeah yeah, it's fast, right, like it's um, nothing really
moved that fast in our solar system. Um. Yeah, And
even comets that approached the Sun they speed up really
fast and then you'll go this fast right Yeah, so

(14:24):
it was moving pretty quick. It's like seeing a freight
freight train coming at in your direction really really fast,
and you're like, Okay, that thing is not going to
stop where I am. It's going so fast. Yeah, exactly,
And fortunately it didn't pass too close to the Earth
or unfortunately if you wanted us to get a better look.
It passed within like fifteen million miles of the Earth. Wow,
that sounds like a lot. Is that a lot? You know?

(14:47):
It's um, it's a significant It's like, um, fifteen percent
of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, so
asteroids passed much closer all the time. Fifteen percent. So
from here the Sun, it's a hundred million miles, million miles,
million miles from here to the side. So it's it's
pretty close. I mean, it's not like it went over

(15:07):
our heads, like it came sort of into this solar system. Oh,
it definitely went right through the solar system. Yeah. I
think your freight train analogy is a perfect one. You know,
you're in a house and you're here, this freight train
rumbled by, and you're like, yesh, that was kind of
loud and close and weird, and it definitely didn't stop
in your town, right, just like blew right through like
you weren't even there. That's frightening. Yeah, And and it's

(15:30):
not even that big, you know, the thing is like
it's we were not sure exactly because we don't have
great pictures of it. It was moving so fast and
it was so far away that we didn't that all
of our telescopes just see it basically as a point
of light. So we have some estimates for its size
and its shape um based on you know, how we
think it's rotating, etcetera. But the thing was not that big.

(15:50):
Like the dimensions are like, you know, a few hundred
meters in the longest dimension and like tens of meters
or maybe a hundreds in the other. So we are
lucky to even e this rock. You know, rocks can
fly through our solar system without us noticing them if
they don't like reflect light just the right moments so
that we can see them from the sun, because these
things don't glow right there dark unless they're reflecting light

(16:11):
from the sun. I see. Wow. Okay, so let's talk
about where it came from potentially or which from which
direction it came, But first let's take a break. Okay,

(16:34):
So I read that this object apparently came from Las Vegas.
Is that that's right? It had a crazy night in Vegas.
It has no explanation for why it's so weird, the
home of rock and roll, right, so rocks that would
make sense, and it just rolled on though our solar system. Yeah,
um no, but you're close. It came from the direction

(16:56):
of Vega, right. We can tell it's trajectory, and we
um extrapolate back. We're like, oh, what's in that direction
in the sky, and that the answer is Vega. Vega
is kind of interesting because it's it's kind of a
nearby star, right, think it's one among the sort of
closer stars. Right. Yeah, but this thing, even traveling at
its high speed, would take hundreds of thousands of years
to get here from Vega. So it's close, you know,

(17:20):
sort of on a galactic scale, but it's not really
close on a you know, um, let's go out for
dinner kind of scale. So it just sort of came
from Vegas, from Vega, right, And again we don't know
that it came from that system. It's just sort of
answering the question what's in the sky in that direction?
We can extrapolate back and say, oh, came that way,
what else is there? But you know, Vega is in

(17:40):
a different place a long time ago. Everything is rotating
and moving and could have gone through that system also
from another one. Right, we have no idea how long
it's been bouncing around the galaxy. Right, and let's talk
about kind of how big it was, because it's not
like the size of Manhattan, right, Like it's it's more
like the size of it's like the sky size of
one skyscraper in Manhattan. It's like maybe up to a

(18:02):
kilometer long and like, you know, fifty to a hundreds
on each side, So it's it's about the size of
a skyscraper. It's like the Empire State Building to zoom
by exactly, or maybe it's the Las Vegas version. Isn't
there one of those in Las Vegas. So somewhere between
the Vegas empar Site building and the real Emparsity building

(18:23):
was the size of this strange, mysterious object. Wouldn't that
be amazing if we visited it and found that it
had exactly the shape of the Empire State Building, that
would be pretty odd. That would be more amazing. That
would be a great twist ending to the science fiction
movie Somebody's going to make about this thing, which started
with a guy in a control room looking at a
blinking light, going, that's weird. What's the Empire State Building

(18:46):
doing there? It's supposed to be in Vegas. I mean
it's not huge, but I mean it's not it's not
like the size of the moon, or it's not the
size of you know, the continent. It's like it's it's
sort of like, well, how big you might imagine a
spaceship to be. Yeah, exactly, it's a reasonable size for
a spaceship, which led to a lot of speculation. Right,
you might be thinking, all right, so it's a rock

(19:07):
from another solar system. We got rocks, They got rocks.
One of their rocks ended up in our backyard. What's
the big deal? Right? But it's kind of a big
deal because we don't expect to see this kind of rock.
What do you mean in terms of its size or
its speed or what. Well, these solar systems are really
far apart, right, And yeah, we got a bunch of rocks,
but most of those rocks are just sort of floating

(19:28):
around our Sun, and occasionally one of them gets kicked
off and floats away. But you know, to pass right
through another solar system is just really small odds. The
chances of the happening are tiny. Based on our understanding
of how often the Sun sort of loses rocks and
let them float into interstellar space, this should almost never happen, right,

(19:48):
So it's like like a rock in our meteor belt.
These are big rocks, but they hardly ever leave the
Solar system, so it's weird that there would be one
floating around randomly. That's right. And there are rocks in
our asteroid belt. But there's also this big cloud of
icy objects that forms comments called the Oort cloud o
O r T, and it's a bunch of really loosely

(20:11):
held objects from the Sun. And that's probably better candidates
for how we might lose rocks. Um. And you know,
they have models for how often does the Sun lose
a rock, and so they can calculate if other suns
are losing rocks about the same level, how often should
we see one of these things? And you know they
did the calculation and they're like, you know, if you
turn on the pan star's telescope, what are the chances

(20:31):
of seeing an extrasolar rock a rock from another solar system,
like within the first few months, and the odds are
like up to one in a hundred millions. You know,
it's just not the kind of thing that happens very
often because these other solar systems are far apart. Space
is pretty empty. What I mean is you hardly have
to worry about running into a rock if you're going

(20:51):
between stars, Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like you build
a golf course and then like a golf ball drops
out of the sky and score the hole in one,
and you're like, well, that's weird. Either golf balls fall
out of the sky a lot more often than I thought,
which makes this not so weird, or something really weird
just happened, right, And that's the situation we're in. And

(21:12):
so right there, it's odd, right, because it can tell
you either that we were wrong, that maybe there are
a lot more of these rocks than we thought, which
is already sort of interesting after physically right to hear
that space is full of interstellar rocks banging around, or
you know, it was just a really really rare event,
and you know, rare things happen, right, People do get
holes in one act um sometimes when they don't expect.

(21:35):
It's so rare things do happen. Or it's not just
a rock, maybe it's something else, right, And that's why
people dug in to understand, like what is this thing?
What is it made out of? What else can we
learn about it? Not only is it rare, but it
was also going at a very rare speed, or like
a very strange speed. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you take

(22:00):
the all the stars in our neighborhood, like our star
and the nearby ones and the nearest few hundreds sort
of in our galactic neighborhood, and you average all their
speeds together, you get like, you know, imagine all those
stars are like a sloshing ocean bouncing around. You know, Um,
you gets sort of the average speed of that whole blob, right,
And this thing was going at almost exactly that speed

(22:21):
relative to us, right, which means you can sort of
think of it like it wasn't moving. It was just
sort of floating there in the galaxy and we moved
through it. What what do you mean, Well, you can
think if you think of like our galactic neighborhood is
like an ocean, this is like a booey sort of
floating in the ocean, right. And of course our sun
is moving relative to the galaxy and our I mean

(22:43):
everything is relative. Right. It passed through our solar system
or we passed our solar system over it. Are the
same statements, right, It's just how you think of the
frame of reference, meaning like like we are the visitors
to it. That's right. It was just having a nice
picnic and we just sort of stormed down the loop.
Are the freight train? Not it exactly. And it's it's

(23:04):
a really odd kind of speed because it doesn't help
us understand where it came from. Like, if it came
from the neighboring star, we would expect it to roughly
have that star's velocity with respect to the galaxy. Right, Um,
if it came from another star, we you'd expected to
have that star's velocity roughly, but it but no stars
have this average velocity, right, most of them are moving

(23:24):
relative to the galaxy. They're slashing around, So it's a
pretty weird speed to have. It's an anomaly kind of
like it's clear it didn't come from possibly the stars
around us, And so the anomalies start to add up. Right,
You're like, oh, well, maybe it's just a rock from
another solar system. Um, okay, Well, actually turns out those
are really rare. You're like, all right, well, rare things happen,

(23:47):
but the rare things for this rock keep adding up.
It's rare and weird in so many different, totally separate
ways that it really makes you start to wonder. And
I think the shape has allowed to do when capturing
the public's imagination. Like, um, you know, if you had
been like a like a ball or like a rock,
like a you know, like a randomly shaped rock, then

(24:07):
people would just say, oh, it's an asteroid. But the
shape of it was also very very weird. Yeah, it's
like ten times longer than it is wide right, it
looks like a skyscraper. And they had all these drawings
of like cigar shaped rocks or whatever, and let me
just interject a little rant here about astronomy public relations.

(24:28):
Every time we hear a story about astronomy, they always
include an artist's conception what this thing might look like? Right,
and it's and sometimes it's labeled very clearly artist conception
basically made up, But often it's not. You know, it's
just like they have this image that leads the article
and people look at it like, oh, that's what it
looks like, but we don't know what this thing looks like.

(24:49):
Some artists sat down and imagined maybe it looks like this.
Another artist would have made something totally different, and so
it always frustrates me. I imagine, like in particle physics,
can we have an artist and pression of what my
data might look like? Come? Why do you guys do
that all the time too? In particle physics? Don't you
like the large hatdrink Clyder, Here is some big explosion

(25:10):
with things coming out of the artist rendition those No, No,
that's actual data, that's actual data. Sometimes we take liberties
and we like, you know, higher clever cartoonists to make
our stuff look more interesting, But we don't make up
artists impression of data like that anyway. Um, Yes, this
thing is like ten times longer than it is whine. Yeah,

(25:32):
and that's kind of how a lot of times in
movies a picture space ships right from alien civilizations, like
long and skinny, kind of like the star the story
in Star Wars. Would you buy that kind of space
ship if you went shopping for one? It makes sense, right,
I mean it's sort of like, Um, it's big, but
you want it to be streamlined in a way. But
why does it have to be streamlined? There's no atmosphere

(25:53):
in space, right, Um, you can have any shape you want.
It doesn't have to be space so dynamic. But was
it going? Well? First of all, how did they know
was that shape it was? If it was so far
away and so small. Yeah, the reason they could tell
is that it's um. The light from it was changing
in a in a periodic way, and so they could
tell had this shape not only because it was weirdly shape,

(26:14):
but because it was tumbling. Right, So this thing is
not moving in a smooth way like zooming along um
in the direction of its length. You imagine a spaceship
is long and thin, it's zooming sort of in the
direction from its back to its front. Right, This thing
is not. It's tumbling, right, it's long and thin, but
it's tumbling like a you know, a tennis racket head

(26:35):
over heels, right, it's um it's it's tumbling around a
short axis. So that's not the kind of spaceship you
want to ride in. There's like a fun spaceship for
the hidians, you know, about five seconds and until you
start vomiting in space, which I don't think it's very fun.
Well you don't need you never know what A and
he's are into. You know. Maybe that's now you're right.

(26:56):
I'm always saying we should broaden our minds and so
what aliens might be like, and so yeah, maybe aliens
enjoy vomiting. I think you might be right there. So
the way you could tell a shape by the way
the light, even though it looks like a pinpoint, the
way that light from that pinpoint was changing sort of
told you that it was there was something in it
spinning and it was roughly the shape. Yeah, And if

(27:18):
something was spherical and it was spinning, then it wouldn't
be changing its apparent shape to us, right, But if
it's spinning or tumbling it has a long shape, then
the part that reflects light keeps changing, right, and so
you see more or less and more or less. And
that's how they made these estimates. A lot of really
good science went into extracting all this information out of
a very small amount of data. Wow, it seems almost fantastical,

(27:41):
like an artist rendition. But you're saying, like if it
was a death star or circular, it would not the
life from it wouldn't be it wouldn't vary. Yeah, exactly,
it wouldn't vary. And so it's tumbling, which is odd also,
but also the fact that it's so long and thin
as unusual. I mean, we look around at the population
of rocks in our solar system. You don't see rocks

(28:02):
like that, Like, you know, rocks are mostly spherical because
of gravity and collisions and stuff like that. Sometimes they
get longer and thinner. But like maybe three to one
or five to one, ten to one for a link
to with ratio is really weird, okay, And there's other
weird things about it, not just the shape, not just
to be, not just the direction it was going. There's

(28:24):
like these mysteries just keep compounding, Like we haven't even
talked about the craziest one. It gets crazier, all right,
gets so much crazier. Yeah, let's talk about that a
little bit more. But first quick break, what's the next one?

(28:50):
It's a very shiny apparently, Yeah, it's really really shiny.
We're like, what is it? You know, we don't know
what this thing is made out of? Um, but based
on its size and it's it's cetera, we know that
it's like ten times shinier than anything in any of
our asteroids, you know, like, what is this thing? It's
so bright, it reflects lights so much. We don't know
what it's made out of. It. That's the only clue

(29:11):
we have is that it's super shiny. Our asteroids are
sort of mostly like dark gray, right, Like, yeah, I
think they're they're gray or red based on how much
iron or whatever they have in them. But this was
a ten times shinier. So it's like a giant, gleaming, gleaming, silver, sparkling,
shiny unicorn horn flying through space. I know it makes

(29:32):
you wonder, like it gives you the image of a
sparkling spaceship, right, um, so you gotta wonder, um and
the thing that makes you think, wow, maybe this thing
could be a spaceship is that as it passed through
our solar system. So here's the weirdest thing. As it
passed through our solar system, we can track its motion
and we can predict its motion based on gravity. Right,
if something is just falling through gravity, we can tell

(29:54):
how it's going to go. But it didn't follow that path.
It looks like as it went through our solar system
it accelerated. What Yeah, they hit the gas. It hit
the gas. Yeah, it came into our solar system and
on its way out it floored it. It's like the
freight train was going through your town and then and
then it was thinking. The conductor was thinking, oh no,

(30:15):
I'm not gonna stop here for sure, this crap hole.
I'm just just gonna I'm just gonna, you know, step
on the accelerator. Yeah, it's like, let's get out of
town quick. Let's not exaggerate. It's already super weird. It
definitely accelerated. It didn't like double its speed. It's a
small effect, but it's definitely there. Definitely happened. Like we
can measure it precisely enough to say that there was

(30:38):
some acceleration and it wasn't just due to the sun
or it wasn't like the Sun was pulling on it
or anything. Well, the Sun was pulling on it, right,
that's the gravitational force, but it moved in a way
that required something else to explain it. It It requires the
Sun's gravity plus an extra push. And that's the question.
Where did that push come from? What what force did

(30:58):
it use to accelerate? Yeah, exactly. And so before you
go to like, well, there must have been an engine
on it and it was, you know, hitting the gas
on the way out, there are some other possible explanations
like maybe it has ice on it, and when it
came through the Solar system, that ice was melted, and
that ice like it shoots out and forms a gas
and basically forms like a tail like a comet, and

(31:20):
that can give it a push like a rocket like
it was. Yeah, but a natural rocket, not like you know,
an engine fabricated in another solar system. It could just
be like a block of ice on one side that's
got turned into gas and that's how a rocket would
work out. But they didn't see this gas, right, Yeah,
they looked at it really carefully, and the thing has
no gas around it, there's no tail, so there's no

(31:41):
evidence of any ice turning into gas or anything like that,
so we still don't understand it. Wow. Okay, So in
case people missed it, this thing flew by our into
our solar system and very close to the Earth. Yeah,
exactly end of this weirdly shaved you know two asked
accelerating shiny, strangely shaped object that we should never have seen.

(32:06):
That is almost impossible for it to exist. Um, just
went by our planet. It came by, it checked us out,
and it hit the gas on the way out. And
and you know, you might wonder, like, what are the
other explanations for it accelerating? Yeah, like what's what's the
most likely explanation? We don't have a most likely explanation.

(32:27):
Another plausible one is maybe it's really big and flat. Right.
If it's big and flat, then it can act like
a sail. It can catch sort of the Sun's radiation
and act like a sail in space. It's called a
solar sail. It basically catches the solar wind. So one
explanation for the speed, right, but none the acceleration. It

(32:48):
doesn't explain all those other things. It doesn't explain all
those other things. But it could explain the acceleration. On
the other hand, if you're thinking, well, big and flat,
that's pretty weird for a rock, right, Yeah, it is
pretty weird for a rock. Nature doesn't make big flat
sheets of material very often, right, You don't see those
in our solar system. What makes that, well, civilizations, Right,

(33:09):
So it's fantastic to think about. Maybe this is a
piece of alien junk. Right, Maybe this is like space archaeology.
Some ship blew up in a war somewhere a billion
years ago, and this is just like a hunk of
it flying through space with some sort of rocket attached
to it. No, it could just be a big flat
sheet of metal and it gets a little boost from

(33:30):
the solar wind as it passes through, and that's why
it's not just moving gravitationally. The acceleration could be explained
it just if it had that shape. On the other hand,
it could have been a purposely designed solar sale, right,
that's a way to get around the galaxy. Build these
sales and go from star to star and get a
little push as you go by each one. Or you
made me think of it was like a Shinese silver surfboard,

(33:53):
like silver surfer Yeah, exactly, It's fascinating to think of
all the ways that this thing is weird, and all
the possible explanations that we we sort of hope for,
right the ones we want, the stories we'd like to tell.

(34:13):
And the thing I love about this object is that
it resists conventional explanation. You try to come up with
some explanation you think makes sense. No, well, how do
you explain this? And how do you explain that it's
got so many different ways of being weird? Which could
mean either it's just kind of like a miracle, like
this crazy unlikely event that happened, or maybe our view
of the universe is totally wrong, and maybe maybe um,

(34:38):
we got it all wrong and it's not that rare
for this to happen exactly. So either it's a rare
event and you know, we're just sort of lucky afternomically
to get to see it, or as you say, it's
less rare than we expect and maybe we'll see more
of them, right, that would be pretty cool. Um, Or
it's not a natural phenomenon, right, maybe it is aliens. Right,
we can't rule that out, but in any case, it's

(35:00):
gone right, it's it went by already it's gone if
you wanted to know more about it too late, Yes,
it's gone, but it's not too late to learn more
about it. I mean we could potentially build like a
fast rocket that takes a slingshot around Jupiter and zooms
out there or something a long time to catch up. Yeah,
it would take a long time to catch up to it,

(35:21):
and by the time it did, it would be like
twenty years before it got there and sent us pictures
back and stuff. Who knows if we even have a
society in twenty years, right, I send data back to
the smoking rubble of Western civilization. That's a that's a
cheery thought, right. The better opportunity is just to build
a bigger telescope, oh to see it. But isn't it
too late? Isn't already sort of? I mean it's leaving

(35:42):
a twenty six kilometers per second? Yeah, But fortunately we've
been building a really awesome new telescope for the last
I don't know, en years, and it's going to turn
on in a few years. It's called the Large Synoptics
Survey Telescope, and it's going to be pretty awesome, and
it's going to turn on in about three years and
when it does, it's going to give us pictures like
nothing's ever seen before. And um, and it might be

(36:04):
able to give us good pictures of this crazy thing.
But wouldn't it have been better to look at it
when it was going through the Solar system? You know,
I get a good look that. Um. Yes, it would
have been um. But we didn't know it was coming,
so we weren't prepared. We were lucky we even saw it.
It was a short notice, yeah, exactly. Um, you know

(36:25):
we saw it when it was already like deep into
our solar system. It's not the kind of thing we
were looking for, right. Nobody sets out to find these
things because you expect them to never come. Well, that
just kind of tells you that on a daily basis,
like we are still seeing things about the universe that
are completely inexplicable, exactly. And that's what I love about
astronomy and space physics that almost every time we look

(36:47):
out there in the cosmos, we see something crazy. Right,
It's full of surprises. There's so many things out there
which if we could see them or learn them, or
if they visited us, would blow our minds with the
way they change perspective about our lives and the universe
and how everything works. Well, if you're an alien writing
on and you're listening to this podcast, we just want

(37:09):
to say hello, Thanks for visiting. Why didn't you stop
and say hi? Was it our breath? Thanks for not
sucking our brains out of our newses see you later,
Thanks for listening everyone, see you next time. If you

(37:34):
still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Daniel and Jorge as one Word, or email us at
Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.